Carol Kirkpatrick, possibly the brightest writer I ever met in a writing group (proof positive being her ability to scribble out a pithy, brilliantly crafted story on the spot) had the additional charm of treating me to an oral history of Brooklyn whenever we walked its streets together. Combining warmth, depth, humor, and subtlety well into her 90s, she will always represent perfectly what I’d like to be when I grow up. My hope is to charm you with this sample of her writing:
What Goes Around Comes Around?
I forget the source of that phrase, but it perfectly fits someone I know. She doesn’t limit it to spirituality but has a broad spectrum multi-dimensional onanism that crosses many existential domains.
To begin with the spiritual, she was brought up in Jewish traditions, not orthodox but very observant. About 20 years ago, to her family’s dismay, she became a Muslim. She prays five times a day, observes Ramadan, and the rest of the Muslim calendar. She watches Al Jazeera, and for a while she wore head scarves. She claims to read the Quran yet does not read Arabic.
Last year she asked if she could accompany me to midnight mass at an Anglican church. I said sure. Then she asked if it would be okay to take communion. I said I thought that might be a bit inappropriate. She made a face like a whipped dog.
I understand the universality of the desire for inclusion. But I fail to get why someone who proclaims their Muslim faith throughout the neighborhood would want to be seen performing a ritual of publicly announcing that she is a believing Christian…when she has not changed her spiritual allegiance.
I sat down to chill out and plan the next couple of hours. She sat down next to me and started to chat.
At first she was talking idly about other members of the senior center, a few of whom were dancing as a disco ball cast bubbles of color on the wall.
Then it started. She began to chronicle her medical problems of the last 70 years. She was a veritable museum of pathology. Did she think I wanted to hear this odyssey of disease and death? At least she could leaven it with some sin, wouldn’t you think?
“All this has happened to me, and I never did anything bad,” she said. “There are people here who went to Woodstock and screwed everything but the lamp post, and they don’t even have to take medicine.”
